Ratchet and Clank Size Matters Review(Updated)

I decided to play Size Matters again at all because it got added to the Playstation Premium Classics service and I heard the PSP version was better than the PS2 so it got me curious in playing the game again. I also have a soft spot for it since it was the first Ratchet game I ever played

As the game is, I wouldn't call the "bad game" so many hype it up as but it's not a great game either. It's pretty much middle of the road all though it's a middle of the road game that I had a moderate amount of enjoyment out of.

The best way of describing Size Matters is that it's an amalgamation of the 2002 game and it's sequels.

You have Ratchet being more self centered and dawning his 2002 look, you got the PDA, and you respawn with the amount of ammo and bolts you had before you died instead of at a checkpoint. It also has the nanotech health upgrades, the weapon upgrades, armour and strafe from 2 and 3. It almost feels like Ratchet and Clank 1.5 at times.

In the PS2 version what held the game back however is the awful camera, it zooms in too close and it jerks around too much when moving and when in tight spaces, and when too many enemies get on screen it becomes frustrating to dodge the attacks since enemies hit as hard. I'm not sure how difficulty in the older Ratchet games worked but it seems the more well you do the harder enemies hit and more ammo they take to die, if anything I'm glad this system was dropped in later games.

The PS5 version which is an emulated PSP version is interesting in that it comes with right stick movement and since the PS5 version lets you customize the controls through the emulator, it meant I can make Ratchet moved like he did in Deadlocked where left stick lets you strafe left and right. It's the way to play the game for me. The auto aim and by extension camera isn't that great since the autoaim follows the enemies and the camera moves along with him on top of being spazzy in tight spaces and with many enemies. So the PS5 version somewhat fixes a prominent issue but at the same time not really.

The mandatory races especially the first while have David Bergeard's awesome music, controls really awkwardly especially with how movement with the analog stick works. Boosting will send you flying upwards instead of on the race track. There's only 2 mandatory races which is fine.

The aforementioned difficulty can be an issue since enemies get so spongey by late game that that I just used the shield, rocket launcher and PDA combo to get past everything. This is towards the end of the game but things just got so unbearably difficult that I stopped using the other weapons. I do disagree with the common sentiment that enemies don't react to getting shot because they do, but they just take so many shots from non rocket launcher weapons that it isn't worth the effort. That and bosses are also spongey and some weapons just won't be able to effectively do damage so PDA spamming becomes prominent after a point.

However the biggest issue with Size Matters is that the game just feels the same game as the console Ratchets, it doesn't offer much you can't find from the PS2, PS3, PS4 and PS5 games. The game's selling point at the time might've been that it was, "Ratchet and Clank on the go" but when playing it on a console, the novelty wears offs. Games like Daxter offered more platforming than the Jak sequels did and the God of War PSP games offered a remaped controls like pressing L and R to dodge and magic shortcuts. Ratchet Size Matters on the other hand doesn't have much you can't find in other games in the series even the PS3 spin offs like Full Frontal Assault and All 4 One have more of an indentity.

There is some good with Size Matters with all this said, the story and character interactions are moderately entertaining and it got some laughs out of me, the game seemingly is an interquel between the first game or and any of the PS2 sequels despite apparently not being that.

The setpieces while cumbersome and possibly frustrating on the PSP analog nub are pretty decent and have more going on than the games Uncharted games do since you can't just hold forward while cool stuff is happening around you.

While it doesn't do anything out of the ordinary for the series the attempt at emulating the series is solid enough. The game really is carried by how much of a series fan I am and how this game was the very first I played.

Overall, I like Size Matters slighty more than I did when I replayed it 2 years ago but rewind and custom controls played a big role in this. I still wouldn't call this game "bad" in a million years since I played worse games but at the same time, its a fun game all though I'm biased towards the series which is another reason. I'm still bummed there won't be another game for years and Insomniac is the "Marvel Studio" now but that is a topic for a different time.